The Crowded Grave

only modern item in the barn was the computer that Anita had installed in the small office behind the showroom for his work, where she had kept the accounts and taken care of orders that came in over Jan’s website. Bruno had known Anita only briefly before her death but admired her bustling energy. Jan probably had to do all that for himself, these days.
    Bruno could understand why Horst enjoyed his visits, the tap-tap sound of Jan’s hammer as he worked, the throat-catching sharpness of the coke dust in the air, the sudden burst of Danish curses that mixed with Jan’s accented French. Bruno had not been to the place since Anita’s funeral some years earlier. Jan had always worked alone so Bruno was surprised to find beside him in the smithy a slim, dark-haired young man whose arms so far showed few signs of the bulging muscles that Jan’s work had developed.
    “This is Galder, one of Anita’s relatives,” Jan said by way of introduction, wiping his hands clean on a towel before greeting Bruno. The young man seemed tense, but nodded coolly and murmured a greeting in mangled French. “He wants to learn the trade.”
    “I’ve come to see if you’ve heard anything of Horst since yesterday,” Bruno said. “Clothilde called me, worried because she couldn’t find him. I went to the house and it looked a bit suspicious, as though there might have been a scuffle.”
    “I haven’t seen him since the night of the lecture in Les Eyzies,” Jan said quickly. He didn’t sound worried. “Nothing wrong then. Maybe he was called back to Germany. That lecture made quite a stir.”
    “His passport and wallet are still at the house, so I don’t think he can have gone far.”
    “Maybe he had a fight with Clothilde and went away to cool off,” Jan said. “It’s one of those relationships, up and down, hot and cold.”
    “Clothilde said that you’re his closest friend here, and when they had a row he usually came to see you.” Bruno felt the young man watching him carefully. Given his poor command of French, the lad was probably trying to work out what Bruno was saying.
    “Yes, often enough,” Jan said, looking down at the iron bar he had been hammering when Bruno first arrived. “But not this time, I haven’t seen him.” He took the rag, picked up the iron bar and thrust it back into the brazier as if he wanted the conversation to end so that he could get back to his work.
    “Did he ever talk to you about his family?” Bruno asked, thinking of the photo album.
    Jan shook his head. “Mostly we just drank and played cards.Sometimes he said he missed speaking German, so we spoke that.”
    “But you’re Danish. Isn’t that your mother tongue?”
    “Yes, but I’m from a place just over the border, and we all speak German, just like a lot of Germans on the other side speak Danish. Schleswig-Holstein, it used to be Danish until the 1860s.”
    “Is that where Horst comes from?”
    “No, he’s from farther south, near Hamburg.”
    “So you talked about that, his childhood, where he grew up?”
    “No,” said Jan, looking impatient. “It was just something that came up. You know, in conversation, ‘How come you speak German?’ And I say I’m from the border and he says he comes from near Hamburg. It was my wife who introduced us. She’d taken her schoolkids to one of his archaeological digs and got to know him that way.”
    “Do you know anything about Horst’s family?” Bruno said. He kept his tone conversational, but determined to press the issue. Jan was not reacting as Bruno had expected. There was no sign of concern about his friend, no evident readiness to help. It didn’t feel right. Maybe he’d better check on Jan’s
permis de séjour
when he got back to the
mairie
.
    “No, I already said so. I’m pretty busy here, Bruno, so if you—”
    “Did you know Horst’s father was a Nazi, in the SS?” Bruno interrupted.
    Jan looked as if he’d been hit by his own iron bar. He seemed to stagger, and then glanced quickly sideways at the young man before looking back at Bruno.
    “No, I didn’t know. How could I?” he said. “That’s quite a shock, learning something like that about a guy you’ve knownfor so many years.” Jan paused. “No wonder he didn’t want to talk about his family. It’s not something I’d want to talk about either. Nor would you.”
    “Did Horst ever talk about having any enemies here, someone who hated Germans, maybe someone who might have known about